March 21, 2013

How Dare You Ask Me About My Own Words!

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So Michele Bachmann (R–Crazytown) gave a speech at CPAC this weekend in which she (a) slammed President Obama over his scandalous mishandling of Benghazi, and (b) slammed him again for his lavish White House lifestyle, including his use of a full-time dog walker. CNN’s Dana Bash trekked over to the Capitol to get a comment. Here’s how it went:

Bash: You talked about the excesses that he’s engaged in, the fact that he has a dog walker, which is not true.

Bachmann: The big point of my speech was about Benghazi….

[Crosstalk plus some outraged histrionics about Obama’s bungled response to Benghazi.]

Bash: But if you want to focus on that, why bring up the other things?

Bachmann, in indignant tones:  You want to talk about dog handlers and there’s four Americans that were killed?

Bash: But congresswoman, you’re the one who brought it up!

Isn’t that great? How dare you ask me about stuff that I myself brought up in the first place? That’s our Michele!

For what it’s worth, Glenn Kessler gave Bachmann a grand total of eight Pinocchios for her CPAC address, which was only 16 minutes long. That’s because (a) he only examined two of her claims, and (b) four Pinocchios is the most he’s allowed to hand out. “There really aren’t enough Pinocchios for such misleading use of statistics in a major speech,” he sighed about her food stamp whopper.

STANDARD REMINDER: Bachmann was briefly considered a serious contender for the Republican presidential nomination. Just in case anyone has forgotten that.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

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Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

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